The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,20
the markers of what posed the most danger to a lady’s sensibilities and senses: The crooked grin. The kiss. The whisper of poetry. A forbidden caress.
Those lists had been proven remarkably incomplete and erroneous.
For it was . . . the wink.
That subtle glide of lashes sweeping down, but not before those depths of irises glimmered with wickedness, a transitory glimpse of a whole host of sentiments: mirth, interest. Desire.
Her lungs struggled to force out the air stuck there.
Desire?
Emma silently scoffed. Impossible.
Furthermore, it was not as though she’d known any of those others firsthand . . . not from this or any other gentleman.
Which perfectly recalled her to the very reason she’d stormed here in the first place.
“Your shot, Charles,” Lord Derek called over.
“Might I speak with you, Lord Scarsdale?” she said tightly.
“He would be glad to, Emma,” the marquess called out on behalf of his eldest son.
“But it is his shot, Fath—”
The marquess fixed a glare on the younger gentleman, effectively silencing him. “I said, he is free to speak to Miss Gately, Derek.” He pointed the end of his stick in Charles’s direction. “He’s free to speak with you, Emma.”
Color filled Charles’s cheeks, and he glanced in the direction of his always-meddling sire. “I can handle my own affairs where Miss Gately is concerned, Father,” he said tightly.
The marquess snorted. “If that were the case, you wouldn’t find yourself in the position you have, then, would you, my boy?”
Emma’s father and his closest friend in the world dissolved into laughter, and she gritted her teeth. As if any of this were amusing, in any way.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, earning a look from her father and Charles . . . which she ignored.
Charles held his cue aloft. “Playing billiards.”
“Playing billiards?”
He nodded. “With the boys?”
“The boys?” she echoed. Her voice climbed a fraction. “The boyyys? They are ancient men.”
“I heard that, Emie,” her father chastised.
Lord Derek added his indignation to the mix. “And we aren’t all ancient. Why, I’m younger than Ch— Owww.” A startled shout escaped the younger man when his father tapped him hard on the back with his billiards stick.
“Have a care, boy.”
Cursing softly, she gripped Charles by the arm and steered him several paces away from the boys now playing.
Except . . . she had made the mistake of touching him. Her fingers curled reflexively upon the soft wool fabric, that softness at odds with the sinewy muscle under her palm. All the moisture leached from her mouth, leaving even her throat dry. Bloody hell, what was wrong with her? “They are not boys, Lord Scarsdale.” She swiftly released him, and stole a glance up to ascertain whether he’d caught that moment of insanity. He continued to eye her from under a hood of golden lashes. “Boys are those scoundrels you keep company with. Speaking of, are they otherwise engaged that you aren’t with your own sort?”
He applied chalk to the end of his cue. “I’ll have you know, one of my ‘sort,’ as you refer to them, is, in fact, married. And happily so.”
“Yes,” she said softly. They had wed several weeks earlier. Her heart cinched. Where there should be only happiness for her friend Lady Sylvia, the cofounder of the Mismatch Society and a former widow who’d found love, there was also a pain she refused to let herself feel . . . for that which Emma had so desperately wanted. No more. Never again. “I am well aware.” She steeled her jaw. “That doesn’t change . . . who you are, however, Charles.”
His brows snapped together, and his perfectly formed mouth tensed in the first-that-she-could-ever-recall hint of failure in his always-charming attitude.
Coward that she was, as tension ran through him and a palpable dark energy thrummed in the air around them, she wanted to call back her words.
“Oh?” Abandoning his relaxed pose, he moved closer, shrinking the space between them and making her feel instantly small in his tall, commanding presence. “And tell me, Emma, since you know so very much. Who am I?” A slight edge of steel coated that murmur, danger whispering up from both his words and a tone too deep to be considered a baritone.
She swallowed, her body pulsing, not at all born of fear, but coming, instead, from her heightened awareness of him.
“Hmm?” Charles leaned close, his mouth a fraction of a breath from hers, and it was the second time in her life that she’d been so near to this man. A kiss whispered in